On Aug. 5, Bobcat Company opened the Bobcat and Doosan Acceleration Center in Bismarck, N.D. The grand opening was attended by North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Sen. John Hoeven, Rep.Kevin Cramer and Bismarck Mayor Mike Seminary. They joined Rich Goldsbury, president of Bobcat Company and Doosan, North America, for remarks during the dedication ceremony and open house.
Spanning 35 acres, the Acceleration Center campus features a 195,000-square-foot operational building and a 22-acre outdoor testing area. The building includes 100,000 square feet of lab and a 35,000-square-foot indoor testing arena.
The Acceleration Center will be used for developing and testing Bobcat products. Doosan will also use the center for research and development.
One of the interesting features of the new Acceleration Center is its office, which features a non-traditional environment: no assigned seats. Employees instead have carts where they store their laptops, phones and any other office equipment they need for their jobs. The office is made up of more than enough desk spaces, allowing employees to sit in different places, depending on what they’re working on and who they’re working with. With only three assigned seats in the whole office, all levels of staff can be seen sitting throughout the office.
Along with the open spaces, the two-floors office also features enclosed focus enclaves for more privacy, different sized meeting rooms and group table spaces for collaboration. With a focus on chance encounters, the office houses a few games, such as shuffleboard, to allow co-workers to interact in a non-work-related environment to spur innovation.
The new Acceleration Center has 175 employees, with 102 of them in the engineering department.
The center’s indoor testing arena is overlooked by two viewing areas, allowing customers, dealers and media members to watch the equipment in action.
